1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus, an inspection method, and a program.
2. Related Art
As an example of a liquid ejecting apparatus, an ink jet printer (hereinafter, referred to as a printer) which ejects ink droplets from a nozzle provided in a head and forms an image is exemplified. Specifically, ink droplets are ejected from a nozzle in communication with a pressure chamber by a pressure change of the ink in the pressure chamber, which is caused when a drive element is driven. According to such a printer, there is a case where an ejection failure of the ink from the nozzle occurs due to an increase in viscosity of the ink within the nozzle due to evaporation of ink solvent from the nozzle or mixing in of air bubbles into the nozzle. Thus, a method for inspecting a nozzle, which causes an ejection failure, based on residual vibration after causing a pressure change in the ink in the pressure chamber by driving the drive element has been proposed (see JP-A-2005-305992, for example).
Generally, a head is configured by bonding a flow path formation substrate on which a pressure chamber is formed with a nozzle plate on which a nozzle is formed. For this reason, a part of the flow path formation substrate (a partition wall of the pressure chamber) peels off from the nozzle plate in some cases due to age-related degradation. If so, ink in a pressure chamber escapes to a next pressure chamber and an ejection failure occurs even if a drive element is driven and a volume in the pressure chamber is changed.
According to an inspection method in which residual vibration is detected by driving only a drive element corresponding to a nozzle as an inspection target as in the inspection method described in JP-A-2005-305992, residual vibration occurs in the same manner both in a case where the flow path formation substrate has peeled off from the nozzle plate and in a case where an ejection failure occurs due to an increase in viscosity of the ink. For this reason, it is determined that the ejection failure due to an increase in viscosity of the ink has occurred even in the case where the flow path formation substrate has peeled off from the nozzle plate, and head cleaning processing is unnecessarily performed.